Felix Wankel was a genius - and a loser. His rotary engine broke NSU in the 1960s. Now Mazda has high hopes for its rotary-engine RX-8. Andrew Hamilton reports
It was the longest of journeys, 10,000 kms by plane, train and coach to drive about 10 kms around a track. But exceptional cars demand exceptional effort. We were in Japan with over 20 European journalists from eight countries, getting a first taste of Mazda's RX-8 rotary-engined sports car.
It makes its Irish and European debut next summer, but before that it will be on sale in Japan and the US .
Mazda has shown remarkable devotion to the rotary engine, first developed by one Felix Wankel. His production model was the NSU Spider which premiered at the 1963 Frankfurt motor show.
By the late 1960s Mazda was also involved with its rotary-engined Cosmo, while Europeans were getting to know the delights (smooth whispering power) and frustrations (rotor seals) of the NSU Ro80. It's said that German Ro80 drivers used to raise figers to one another, indicating how many seals their cars had used!
Now the Ro80 is a much-sought classic. Apart from its unusual works under the bonnet, it still looks remarkably smart today. A handful of dedicated Irish owners are members of the NSU car club. Our colleague Oonagh Charleton had a recent report in Motors about their activities.
Mazda has been ploughing a lonely furrow with this technology in more recent years. In fact, since 1961 the company has built more than two million rotrary engines, most for the RX-7 sports car. While it was moderately successful in the US, it didn't find ready appeal in Europe: poor fuel consumption was a major deterrent.
The RX-8, its successor, is a totally different proposition, according to Mazda. It's greener and cleaner and, says Mazda, it uses a massive 40 per cent less fuel than its predecessor.
We first saw it in concept form at the 1999 Tokyo motor show and remarkably little has changed since then. There are four doors, the two rear doors opening towards the back of the car. There's no centre pillar, so climbing in or out of the back a dawdle.
Two versions are being marketed with engines equivalent to 192 and 240bhp. The life and soul of RX-8 is Renesis which, believe it or not, is a bizarre mating of RE (rotary engine) and the book of Genesis. Only the Japanese could come up with it.
Renesis is the new technical and design approach that is revolutionising the rotary engine, says a confident Mazda Lewis Booth, British president of the Ford-controlled company. He sees the RX-8 as a powerful weapon in bringing emotion and glamour back to Mazda, admitting that it had gone quiet for quite a while.
Actually, the renaissance is already under way. The new 6 family car has met with an enthusiastic response and waiting in the wings is the chic 2 which will be built at Ford's Valentia plant.
RX-8, though, is the dream topping. "We think it will brings us many new customers and go into markets where we haven't been before. No other flagship car will be so revolutuonary."
Which brings us to our 10km-drive around Mazda's Miyoshi proving ground, 100 kms from Mazda's headquarters in Hiroshima. Did it feel revolutionary or different? Well, yes and no. In our limited test, we found excellent chassis dynamics with robust composure when provoked. The engine has a high revving personality which did make some of us wonder about consumption. Mazda's line, apart from wait-and-see, was that the 240bhp version would be like a conventional 2.5 litre V6.
Some thought the back seat area a bit claustrophobic but then it's unlikely that RX-8 owners will be filling up with family. It's too smart for the school run.
So, the rotary engine! Normal combustion engines use the up-and-down movements of pistons to rotate a horizontally placed crankshaft. On one end are combustion chambers, on the other crankshaft. Vibrations are balanced by a flywheel. The rotary engine is based on two bodies rotating on a parallel axis. The piston, also called rotor, is triangular shaped. Its three sides or faces are equal in length and convex. The piston orbits inside an oval housing.
Poor old Felix Wankel was something of a loser: the 100th anniversary of his birth in the Baden region of Germany was in August last. It was away back in 1924 that he first considered building petrol engines without reciprocating parts.
He worked with the Aviation Ministry of the Third Reich, eventually setting up a development centre in Lindau to examine and test multi-cylinder aircraft engines. In 1944, after successfully testing a rotary disc valve compressor, the French army march into Lindau, destroyed his centre and had him imprisoned. In 1951 he was turned down by Opel with the words "There are no better engines than ours". By 1957 the first Wankel engines were running in laboratory tests. In 1963 there was the first production Wankel, the NSU Spider. The NSU Ro80 came in 1968.
In the early 1970s Felix Wankel was besieged by people and companies interested in buying licences for his patents. He sold patent licences to Daimler-Benz, VW, Rolls-Royce, Porsche, Mazda and Yamaha. The profits rolled in but not for long.
The beginning of hard times was in 1974. Climbing fuel prices during the energy crisis and more stringent emission regulations in the US brought further development of the Wankel engine to a stop. In 1976 Audi stopped production of the Ro80 which it had taken over from NSU. Of all the car makers who originally bought a licence from Wankel, only Mazda has stayed faithful to the rotary engine. It lives on too in the Norton motor cycle used by police forces in Britain.
Dr Wankel's last big claim to fame was in 1976 when he developed a rotary-engined speedboat that travelled at 100 km/h on Lake Constance. In 1986, a tired and disappointed old man, he sold his research institute to Daimler-Benz for DM 100 million.
It was on October 9 1988 that he passed away in Heidelberg. The RX-8, if it fulfils Mazda's hopes, could be his best and most potent 21st century memorial.